


Windward House

by Brumeier



Series: Bite Sized Fic 2020 [75]
Category: The Three Investigators | Die drei ??? - Various Authors, The Trixie Belden Mysteries - Julie Campbell Tatham & Kathryn Kenny
Genre: Attempted Murder, Dysfunctional Family, Established Relationship, F/M, Haunted Houses, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Prompt Fill, Tragedy, World Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:33:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26485723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: LJ Comment Fic for Tales From the Dark Side prompt:any, any, going to a haunted house (real haunted or attraction, up to you)In which Trixie and Jupiter take a trip overseas, and there's one particular house with a tragic history that she really wants to visit.
Relationships: Trixie Belden/Jupiter Jones | Justus Jonas
Series: Bite Sized Fic 2020 [75]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1610332
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3
Collections: Bite Sized Bits of Fic from 2020





	Windward House

“Isn’t it glorious?” 

Trixie got out of the car, barely waiting for Jupiter to park it first. He didn’t think the house was particularly glorious. It was a big stone pile, the whole thing blanketed by an air of desolation. It was perched on a cliff overlooking the rocky coastline, battered by what the locals called the Celtic Sea.

When Jupiter had agreed to a European trip, he’d imagined museums and castles, maybe a trip on the Orient Express for sentimental reasons. ( _Murder on the Orient Express_ was one of their favorite movies.) What he hadn’t expected was to be dragged all the way to Cornwall to see some old house.

“Why are we here?” he asked, joining Trixie by the front door. 

“Because Windward House is tragic and beautiful, and I couldn’t resist seeing her for myself.”

“Tragic?” That piqued Jupiter’s interest. “How so?”

The house was locked, of course, so Trixie couldn’t get inside. She settled for wandering around the outside, peering through dirty windows at empty rooms. Jupiter trailed after her.

“The Meredith family lived here, back in the thirties,” Trixie explained. “Mary Meredith and her husband Thomas. He was a painter, locally famous. His model, a Spanish gypsy woman named Carmel, lived with them.”

“Ménage a trois?” Jupiter asked facetiously. 

Trixie giggled and gave him a little shove. “No, you perv. Mary hated Carmel. Jealous, probably. According to all accounts, Mary was a real ice queen.”

It all sounded a little too Real Housewives to Jupiter, but he could tell Trixie was invested in the story. He should’ve known that a woman who got sentimental over animals and homeless people and soap commercials would talk about long-dead people like they were friends of hers.

“Carmel and Thomas had an affair. When Mary found out, she threw Carmel out. The story at the time was that Carmel, in a fit of anger, snatched Mary’s baby from the crib and tried to throw her over the edge of the cliff. During the ensuing tussle, Mary went over instead and died. Two days later Carmel died, too, supposedly of pneumonia. Oh, dang it! I didn’t set the ambience. It was raining that night at the cliff.”

The thing that had initially brought Trixie and Jupiter together was their mutual love of mysteries, and Jupiter hadn’t missed the phrasing Trixie had used. 

“The story at the time? So what really happened?”

“The baby, Stella Meredith, was actually Carmel’s daughter. The three of them took a trip to France, and when they came back Mary and Thomas had a baby. It was Mary who tried to throw Stella off the cliff. And Mary’s friend, Miss Holloway, who made sure Carmel didn’t survive.”

Jupiter nodded. “They pinned it all on the gypsy.”

“There’s where it happened.”

They’d circled the house and come back around to the front, to the cliff. Trixie pointed to a craggy dead tree right on the edge. In his mind’s eye, Jupiter could see two women grappling with each other, rain pouring down, waves crashing on the rocks below. A crying baby. Trixie was right. It was incredibly tragic.

“What happened to Stella?” he asked.

“She was raised by her grandfather, who had a house in town. Thomas Meredith moved away, died in France.”

“And Windward has been empty ever since.”

“Not empty,” Trixie corrected. “Mary and Carmel are still inside, still fighting each other.”

“Oh. You think it’s haunted.”

It was a common disagreement between the two of them. Trixie had a very open mind, and a willingness to believe in the unbelievable. Jupiter preferred to stick with the facts, and the fact was there was no evidence that ghosts were real.

“I _know_ it’s haunted.” Trixie turned back to the house, eyes narrowed. “And I need to see the rest.”

Before Jupiter could stop her, she’d worked open one of the floor-to-ceiling windows and climbed through it.

“Trixie! That’s trespassing!”

“Take a look at this place!” Trixie called in response. 

Jupiter sighed and climbed through the window. The inside of the house was just as decrepit as the outside. The rooms were cavernous and dusty, showing signs of animal habitation at some point in the past.

“Hey, be careful on that!” Jupiter admonished. Trixie was on her way up the large curving staircase.

“It’s perfectly fine. Look! Here’s the round window!”

Jupiter tested out the first couple of steps. They creaked quite a bit but seemed sound enough. He ascended, casting a aggrieved look at the grime-covered chandelier. The round window, which looked out at the cliff and the sea beyond, was at the top of the stairs.

“What a perfectly perfect view!”

On that Jupiter could agree. The late afternoon sun was slanting through the dusty glass, limning Trixie’s curls in gold and casting a warm glow on her face. Jupiter would follow her anywhere – haunted house, ancient catacombs, Yeti caves in Timbuktu. 

“Wow, look at this!” Trixie poked her head into a room off the landing. “This must’ve been Thomas’ art studio.”

There was a wall of windows looking out over the sea, like greenhouse glass. Something was off about it, though. The same light that had shone through the round window so warmly had a different feel in the room. It was colder somehow. The rippling lights and shadows on the ceiling made him feel just a little dizzy.

“How did he stand it in here?” Trixie asked, wrapping her arms around herself. “I can barely breathe.”

Jupiter didn’t believe in ghosts. But he did believe that some places could feel wrong due to environmental issues like carbon monoxide, electromagnetic fluctuations, and low frequency sound waves. Whatever was happening in that room, he wanted to get away from it.

“Can you imagine how horrible it was for Carmel?” Trixie’s normally buoyant personality had dampened, her whole body slumped. “Treated like a servant? A nanny to her own daughter?”

“I think we’ve seen enough,” Jupiter said. 

He put his arm around Trixie and steered her back toward the stairs.

“Love can really make a mess of things, can’t it?” Trixie asked as they climbed back through the front window.

“It can,” Jupiter agreed. “But sometimes it makes things pretty great.”

He gave her a kiss beside the car, holding her close. Driving away the feeling from that creepy upstairs room, at least for himself. The Meredith family had come to tragic ends, but that was their story. Jupiter had different plans for himself and Trixie.

“Where to next?”

“Let’s go into Biddlecombe. I saw a cute bed and breakfast when we passed through earlier. And a cute little pub where we can have dinner.”

“Sounds good to me.” 

They drove away from Windward House, and its sad history. There were better memories to be made in Cornwall.

**Author's Note:**

>  **AN:** Windward House and the Merediths belong to the movie _The Uninvited_ , released in 1944 and starring Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey (it's my favorite ghost story ever).


End file.
